Monday 22 September 2008

Montana & Glacier National Park

This morning, Sandra & Jim headed back to Calgary (and work) while we headed south of the border, this time by road into Montana. The plan was to drive through Glacier National Park and on to Whitefish. The photo above is just a random butt just on the US side of the border.

Glacier National Park

We drove out to Lake Sherbourne along the way. It's in the north east corner of Glacier National Park. There wasn't much to see, because the weather had turned straight out nasty! Apparently the wildlife around this area is prolific, but we were there a bit late in the morning and we weren't overly keen to get out of the car into the freezing wind.

Logan Pass

I did the research before coming down here and was of the understanding that the main park road 'Road to the Sun' would be open for us. Wrong. As per usual, the yanks fed us wrong information and started their roadworks a week early. We'd come all this way and decided to take the Road to the Sun as far as we could, which turned out to be to Logan Pass. At the summit, we could see a waterfall cascading down to opposite hillside.

Unfortunately the weather was so bad that we couldn't see much because everything was surrounded by cloud. The wind was joined by rain, then sleet, followed by snow. We had to drive back to the park gate and then drive all the way around the perimeter of the park adding about 300kms to the trip. Not happy!
Whitefish wasn't anything remarkable, but not a bad place to stay for the night either. It's close to Glacier Nat Park or the ski resorts near by. I can see the potential for Glacier National Park, but we need to visit a bit earlier in the year next time. Unfortunately it was disappointing this time around.
Tomorrow we make the long drive back to Calgary where we have to prepare for our six week South American adventure in a few days.